LowCarb is the real *SKINNY BEHIND* a world wide shrink.This Diet is not only reducing waistlines it is losing the Fat in the junk food job market.
By, Nutritional Chef Carlo J. Morelli
Jan. 26 2004
The Worldwide concerns about healthy diet shifts are impacting employment from Farmdale, Ohio to Kraft Foods, Poland, and the screams can be heard from the "sky is falling" crowd almost as predictably as the pounds are falling off the "we told you so" LowCarb dieters midriffs .
It appears that this is a good news, bad news scenario. The overwhelming evidence is that people are finally reading the writing on the walls regarding a shift away from the traditionally processed, high carbohydrate, fast foods, to health conscience alternatives.
Still, and to this very day, there are those among us that will discount the advantages of Low Carb diets. However, the irrefutable evidence is, that for many, not all or even most, Atkins and the Low Carb diets are working miracles for people that have never enjoyed any success in the war against their own weight. There is so much proof that this transformation is more than a parting fad, finally, and with good cause, the entire world has been impacted..
Kraft to Cut 6,000 Jobs, Close 20 PlantsBy DAVE CARPENTER
AP Business Writer
January 27, 2004, 11:30 PM CST
CHICAGO -- The growing trend toward healthier eating is taking a bite out of sales and profits at Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's largest food company. Now Kraft employees are paying a price, too.
The maker of Oreo cookies, Velveeta cheese and Oscar Mayer meats disclosed plans Tuesday to cut 6,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its work force, and close up to 20 plants worldwide by 2007 in a restructuring prompted by sluggish sales and poor results for its new products.
The announcement came as the Northfield, Ill. based company reported a 7 percent decline in fourth quarter profits -- the latest in a series of financial disappointments -- and said 2004 earnings also will come in below expectations.
Kraft isn't alone in its struggles in the food business. American consumers' increased health concerns have put the entire packaged food industry under severe pressure to change quickly. Worries about the artery clogger "trans fat," rising obesity and the trend toward low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets have hurt sales of cookies and some other packaged foods.
"The growing importance of health and wellness has altered buying patterns to a degree I have not seen before in the food industry," Kraft CEO Roger Deromedi told analysts in New York. "Low-carb diets like Atkins and South Beach, the focus on trans fat, concerns about obesity and increased demand for organic and natural products are requiring a shift in how we market and what we market."
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EXCLUSIVE REPORTS
From the January 16, 2004 print editionLow-carb diets force industry to adapt
Nicole Garrison-Sprenger
Staff Reporter
The rising popularity of low-carb dieting in America has Minnesota's food companies taking a gut check.
In the past year, volume sales of cereal at Golden Valley-based General Mills Inc. have declined. Sales at Minnetonka-based International Multifoods Corp., which manufactures baking mixes, boxed potatoes and pancake mixes, also shrank. Most of these products are considered high in carbohydrates.
On the other side of the equation, Austin-based Hormel Foods Corp., best known for its Spam luncheon meat and Dinty Moore beef stew, reported a 7.7 percent rise in sales over last year. National egg consumption increased roughly 3 percent in 2003. Meat and eggs are high in protein but low in carbs.
"We know that consumption is up," said Jim Wade, director of foodservice sales at Litchfield-based Sparboe Farms, which produces eggs. "A lot of it is being driven by these diets, like South Beach and Atkins. ... The industry is definitely benefiting."
Executives at most other companies, however, are hesitant to attribute any change in sales to the low-carb craze. "Certainly when you have a diet high in protein ... there's an effect on a company like Hormel," said spokeswoman Julie Craven. "But we're still looking at its overall impact."
A number of local and regional food executives believe there's at least some fallout from such diets. They also know food companies are concerned.
"I would say it's a trend that everyone is aware of and watching," said John Nelson, business development manager for Bard Advertising, an Edina-based marketing communications firm specializing in food clients. "Whether they are selling into food service or retail, food companies -- especially baking-related companies -- have seen the impact low-carb diets have had on their business."
New products
Some industry insiders say food companies must either develop low-carb products or find better ways to promote the products they now make.
"To a degree, the low-carb craze has had measurable impact on sales for consumer goods companies," said Jon Hauptman, a vice president at Willard Bishop Consulting Inc. in Barrington, Ill. "Over time I would expect that impact to be minimal as companies respond with new, low-carb products and educate consumers about the health benefits of their current items."
According to Productscan Online, a market research company in Naples, N.Y., companies introduced more than 600 low-carb products in 2003. A walk through a local grocery store revealed few, if any, such products manufactured by Minnesota-based companies.
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Low-carb diets blamed for decline in orange juice sales
Associated Press
BRADENTON, Fla. - The popularity of the Atkins and South Beach diets appears to be slimming down Florida's citrus industry and now juice makers are studying how to counter the trend.
Sales of orange juice have been dropping for two years now, coinciding with big growth in the two diets. At least 15 million people nationwide are following the diets, which call for the elimination of most high-carbohydrate foods, including fruit juices.
Orange juice, with it's high sugar content, is one of the beverages dieters are shunning, along with other high-carbohydrate foods such as white rice, bread, pasta and potatoes.
"We're trying to determine what impact the Atkins and other low-carbohydrate diets, such as the South Beach diet, are having on orange juice sales," said Eric Boomhower, spokesman for the citrus department. "It's an important trend, and we need to understand it."
Boomhower said his agency just initiated its study, so it will take some time before conclusions are reached.
In the past year, sales of refrigerated orange juice were down 1.2 percent, and sales of frozen concentrated orange juice dropped 18.5 percent, reports Information Resources Inc., a Chicago-based food and beverage research firm.
The impact of low-carbohydrate diets on the eating of various foods has already been felt strongly.
Sales of beef, for example, shot up 22 percent during the past year, according to Information Resources.
Beef is on the recommended list for the diets. Demand for it has been so high that it has contributed to rising cattle prices in recent months.
Sales of bacon, eggs and cheese also have experienced double-digit increases during the past year. In turn, sales of newly created low-carbohydrate foods and drinks such as Atkins shakes and snack bars are up more than 60 percent and supermarkets are dedicating more shelf space to them.
Low-carb diets bite into sales of bread
Mike Fimea/The Arizona Republic
Jeff Benkel got a sense of the popularity of the Atkins diet when his bakery introduced a low-carbohydrate loaf last week.
"We introduced a test run at the Biltmore (Fashion Square) farmers' market and sold about a dozen loaves right away," said Benkel, whose family owns two Arizona Bread Company bakery/cafes in the Valley.
"It hasn't made a huge impact on our restaurant clients; the impact is on the retail side. We've had a lot of requests for low-carb bread, and we're selling a lot more salads and high-protein items at lunchtime."
Benkel and some other Valley bakers are scrambling to react to the renewed popularity of the Atkins diet, which eschews bread, pasta and potatoes in favor of meats, eggs and cheese.
First espoused by Dr. Robert Atkins in the early 1970s, the low-carb, high-protein mantra has produced three books that have sold more than 18 million copies. Atkins died in April, but his last volume, Atkins For Life, published in January, has been on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list for 39 weeks.
It's clear the Atkins craze is affecting bread consumption. According to a study by the National Bread Leadership Council, 40 percent of Americans are eating less bread than they did a year ago. The council is convening a meeting this month in Rhode Island to address how to educate the public that breaking bread is still part of a healthy lifestyle.
"It's too bad that we can't just eat all foods in moderation. But no, we have to do something dramatic all the time," said Judi Adams, president of the Wheat Foods Council and a registered dietician, referring to the Atkins diet. "We have to look for this magic bullet."
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WHAT HAPPENED?For over 30 years the fast food industry, with the overwhelming encouragement and cooperation of the Federal, State, and Local nutritional gurus, have been pulling the wool over the eyes of the consumer. These so-called experts should be skinned for their pack mentality, systematic lies, distortions, and locked up for intellectual malpractice for their treatment of such visionaries as Dr Robert Atkins, who in the early 1970's warned the world of the perils of pizza, pastries, peta bread, and pasta.
It has only now become apparent that the agenda driven mantra of the food pyramid, was more akin to a grave marker than a monument to healthcare. And more is being learned everyday about the heavy handed influence of the enviro-vegan-terroist-socialist and their one-world vision and international lawmaking prowess. More people have died at the hands of these food-nannies in the name of love, than all of the bullets since the invention of gunpowder.
But, so much for the good news..
Here are some of the questions and the facts about weight gain and loss..
Q) Are the junk food makers and marketers the reason for the obesity in the world...
A) Hell no, fat people are responsible for being fat. OREO Manufacturers are no more responsible for weight gain than dictionary publishers are for smart kids. Only a minuscule number of morbidly obese among us are in that state because of a medical condition, or a mental disorder. Sorry.. Discipline and hard work can and will change your waist size, and/or your grade point average.. But you already knew that, didn't you?
Q) Can TV commercial's influence the unhealthy eating habits of it's viewers..
A) ..a ..NO! If TV advertising campaigns could change the way we live, all white males would drowned at birth, or incarcerated for intent to think without a woman. Madison Ave. marketing moguls freely admit that all their billion dollar ad campaigns can do is influence the brand of choice, and seldom the want or need of a product.
Q) Which diet is the best for weight loss?
A) None, any, all! The first question is, or should be, do I need a diet or an exercise regiment. People within 15 pounds of their wanted weight can alter their walking habits and achieve their ideal, in a healthier, safer, and a more permanent solution by spending 30 minutes walking, than fretting for hours over ingredients, counting thingys, and shopping for exotic ghastly substitutions for good tasting foods.
Second, if it is a diet that better fits your need, what are your eating habits that most conform to the multitude of acceptable dieting methods available in the market today?..
Q) Are the LowCarb diets dangerous?
A) Yes, this diet has as much risk as using a Stairmaster, riding a bike, following a vegetarian lifestyle or eating too many low calorie entrees. Whenever you change your eating habits drastically, or to a highly restrictive diet you pose a health risk. Anyone considering a weight loss program should start by visiting your own physician. That said, there are consequences to this or any diet.
The greatest threat that a LowCarb diet poses is that there are those that will think all they have to do is eat more meat, and cut back on carbs. That is as dangerous as flying a plane without training.. The Atkins, South Beach, and other diets have many important components to them than choosing a recipe. The diet is a lifestyle altering experience and it's success is truly dependent upon the total adaptation into your daily routine.
Q) What should I know or do to choose the right diet for me.
A) Great question.. Different strokes for different folks. Some diets are best suited for a man, and others lend themselves to bowlers.
Those that follow my columns already know that I believe the Atkins Diet is easier for most southerners and men. This isn't any surprise, leopards don't change their spots. The problem with Weight Watchers and Zone, or any calorie restricted diet for men is counting stuff, and eating fresh salads.
Women on the other hand have problems eating "fat", and "greasy stuff", and generally don't mind journalizing and bookkeeping. Weight Watchers and the Ornish Diet are more in keeping with natural instincts. All bets are off with most southerners women. Most have adjusted to beef and pork, and eating grilled fatty meats.
The only draw-back to Atkins for men is bread, and pasta, aside from beer, a man would walk a mile for a sandwich, or pasta..
"First espoused by Dr. Robert Atkins in the early 1970s..."Well, not exactly, Atkins cites research on diabetes going back, I think, to maybe the thirties or fourties, and I remember listening to Dr. Carlton Frederics on the radio, who warned of the dangers of Carbs/hypoglycemia to general health and well-being. He passed away in the early eighties and Atkins moved to the forefront..
Actually I don't remember this from any personal knowledge.. LOL, but I found out this diet and theory all started with a small booklet entitled Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public, not written by a dietitian or a doctor, but by an undertaker named William Banting. It became one of the most famous books on obesity ever written. First published in 1863, it went into many editions and continued to be published long after the author's death. The book was revolutionary and it should have changed western medical thinking on diet for weight loss forever.
William Banting was well-regarded in 19th century society. He was a fine carpenter, and undertaker to the rich and famous. None of Banting's family on either parent's side had any tendency to obesity. However, when he was in his thirties, William started to become overweight.
He consulted an eminent surgeon, a kind personal friend, who recommended increased "bodily exertion before any ordinary daily labors began". Banting had a heavy boat and lived near the river so he took up rowing the boat for two hours a day. All this did for him, however, was to give him a prodigious appetite. He put on weight and was advised to stop. So much for exercise!
He was advised that he could remedy his obesity by moderate and light food. But wasn't really told what was intended by this. He says he brought his system into a low, impoverished state without reducing his weight, which caused many obnoxious boils to appear and two rather formidable carbuncles. He went into hospital and was ably operated upon - but also fed into increased obesity.
Banting went into hospital twenty times in as many years for weight reduction. He tried swimming, walking, riding and taking the sea air. He drank "gallons of physic and liquor pitas", took the spa waters at Leamington, Cheltenham and Harrogate, and tried low-calorie, starvation diets; he took Turkish baths at a rate of up to three a week for a year but lost only 6 pounds in all that time, and had less and less energy.
He was assured by one physician, whom he calls "one of the ablest physicians in the land", that putting weight on was perfectly natural; that he, himself, had put on a pound for every year of manhood and he was not surprised by Banting's condition - he merely advised "more exercise, vapor baths and shampooing and medicine".
Banting tried every form of slimming treatment the medical profession could devise but it was all in vain. Eventually, discouraged and disillusioned - and still very fat - he gave up.
By 1862, at the age of 66, William Banting weighed 202 lbs and he was only 5 ft 5 ins tall. Banting says that although he was of no great weight or size, still, he says:
"I could not stoop to tie my shoes, so to speak, nor to attend to the little offices humanity requires without considerable pain and difficulty which only the corpulent can understand, I have been compelled to go downstairs slowly backward to save the jar of increased weight on the knee and ankle joints and have been obliged to puff and blow over every slight exertion, particularly that of going upstairs."
He also had an umbilical rupture, and other bodily ailments.
On top of this he found that his sight was failing and he was becoming increasingly deaf.
Because of this last problem, he consulted an aural specialist who made light of his case, sponged his ears out - and blistered the outer ear - without the slightest benefit and without inquiring into his other ailments. Banting was not satisfied: he left in a worse plight than when he went to the specialist.
Eventually, in August of 1862 Banting consulted a noted Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons: an ear, nose and throat specialist, Dr. William Harvey. It was an historic meeting.
Dr. Harvey had recently returned from a symposium in Paris where he had heard Dr Claude Bernard, a renowned physiologist, talk of a new theory about the part the liver played in the disease of diabetes. Bernard believed that the liver, as well as secreting bile, also secreted a sugar-like substance that it made from elements of the blood passing through it. This started Harvey's thinking about the roles of the various food elements in diabetes and he began a major course of research into the whole question of the way in which fats, sugars and starches affected the body.
When Dr. Harvey met Banting, he was interested as much by Banting's obesity as by his deafness, for he recognized that the one was the cause of the other. So Harvey put Banting on a diet. By Christmas, Banting was down to 184 lbs and, by the following August, 156 lbs.
I had heard of William Banting but did not know about his suffering.
My wife and I had fresh cooked Dungeness Crab this evening here at home for our 47 wedding anniversary. I used to eat a half a bag of Frito Lay Dip Chips with it but I was reduced to celery sticks with a cheese spread. I thought about Pork Rinds but tire of them quickly. I saw a cook on food TV reheat them on a cookie sheet in the over and then season them with either Cajun spice or maybe it was Cinnamon. Can you suggest something in place of chips because we eat a lot of fresh crab. We buy it live off the boat and cook it on the stove...
It appears that your problems are nearly over... :)
Frito-Lay to Market Low-Carb Doritos and Tostitos
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
NEW YORK — Snack foods company Frito-Lay (search) said Wednesday it is introducing two new types of chips to capitalize on the popularity of low-carbohydrate diets (search).
The two new products, called Doritos Edge and Tostitos Edge, will cut out 60 percent of the carbohydrates that are in regular Doritos and Tostitos.
Frito-Lay, a unit of PepsiCo Inc. (PEP), has already eliminated trans fats from its brands. Trans fats, which give products a longer shelf life, have been linked to heart disease.
The new chips will use soy proteins and fiber as substitute ingredients, the company said in a statement. Both Tostitos Edge and Doritos Edge will have six net carbohydrates, 10 grams of protein, and three grams of fiber.
The low-carb craze, popularized by the high-protein Atkins diet (search), has food companies rolling out new products to jump on the bandwagon.
Fast food chains McDonald's Corp. (MCD) and Burger King revamped their menus to cater to customers counting their carbs.
The alcohol industry is also taking notice. Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc.'s (BUD) low-carb Michelob Ultra beer has been a big profit driver for the past year and Adolph Coors Co. (RKY) is rolling out Aspen Edge beer to take a part of the health-conscious market.
Spirits companies such as Diageo Plc. (search) are using their advertising to point out that many of their drinks have always been low carbohydrate offerings.
Doritos Edge is currently being tested in Phoenix, and both products will be available across the United States in May.
What a success story.. keep up the great work.. you are one of the millions that have found a home with this diet.. However, as you know, there are a great many others that do not fair as well..
Please keep us informed of your progress and kindly drop in to give us any tips that you develop to help others with their quest.. Carlo
I ate a bunch of sugar-free jelly bellies once. They were absolutely great, until all of a sudden...and we were in a car traveling home. I am very careful now (smile)!!